MINDFUL of the flaws which afflicted the first series of the duo's debut BBC Scotland sitcom, The Creatives, set in an advertising agency in their native Edinburgh, Jack Docherty and Moray Hunter have been very, very hard at work on what they're sure is the show's new biologically-improved miracle second version, due to hit TV screens this week.

''Very, very hard at work'' is actually that rarity in ad-land's ever-expanding universe of hyperbole - it's an understatement.

For one thing, Jack and Moray filmed all six episodes of the series inside five weeks, recording their co-starring roles within a frenetic schedule of 12-hour days and six-day weeks. And that wasn't all.

Near-simultaneous with strutting their stuff before the cameras on an authentic-looking office set created inside the former Wills' cigarette factory in Glasgow's East End, the pair were also editing the sitcom's two opening episodes.

Most importantly of all, though, the MkII incarnation of The

Creatives had been fully honed and polished as a script before it ever reached the stage of being filmed and/or edited. This happy full-term gestation was something sadly denied the first series of The

Creatives, as I discovered when I met a tired-looking Jack and Moray during a brief break from filming in Scotland's unlikeliest answer to Hollywood - Dennistoun.

''I think we lost sight of some of our initial objectives for the first series,'' admits Jack, whose air of exhaustion was unable to mask his joy at having recently ended his gruelling two-year stint as host of a daily late-night chat-show on Channel 5.

''There wasn't enough focus on the personal lives of Ben and Robbie, the two characters played by Moray and I,'' Jack explains. ''Instead of concentrating on the circumstances of their private lives - Ben's unhappy marriage; Robbie's urge to lose his single status by getting married - we were too concerned with establishing verisimilitude in the pair's working lives.

''For this series we've pared things down. The ad agency, for instance, has become the property of just the four main characters. My wife has become an unseen ''Her Indoors''-type presence, informing my attitude to life, acting as the source of my misery.

''We've got back closer to what we first wanted, which is portraying the trials and tribulations of two blokes in their middle-youth; two thumb-twiddlers pondering their lives as thirtysomethings in a business which is a younger man's province.''

Looking equally as tired as his long-time performing partner but rather more svelte due to his current alcohol-free lifestyle, Moray concurred: ''Some people at the Beeb defined the first series as properly belonging neither on BBC1 nor on BBC2, but on BBC1.5. With hindsight, they had a point. Likewise, some folk have said that the scripts for the opening series came across as first drafts, which they weren't.

''They might as well have been in some respects, however, because the series was finally commissioned around the same time that Jack got the Channel 5 show. This meant that whereas we'd written the first two episodes of The Creatives over a long period, we suddenly had to write the other four inside a month.

''There was some broad comedy in there, but our writing tended too much towards the subtle end of the spectrum, towards being clever and dry. Looking back on it, knowing now what we now know, The Creatives can be seen as the first attempt by Jack and I to write real rather than to write surreal, as we'd done for TV before with Don And George . . . and frankly, our attempt failed.

''But I think now that Jack and I are both more real, as writers and perhaps as people. It's a thrill to create a world that folk might believe in. We've grown up. We hope. We think. Surely by now . . .''

As hands-on co-directors of a leading London-based independent film and TV company, Absolutely Productions, Jack Docherty and Moray Hunter have certainly been grown-ups in a business sense for some time. What future productions can we expect from Absolutely?

Having recently finished its run on C4, Armstrong and Miller's hit comedy sketch show has been re-commissioned for a fourth series. The adult animation series Stressed Eric will shortly return, too.

There will be Trigger Happy on C4, described by Jack as ''a more sophisticated Candid Camera . . . stunty, shot on the streets.'' One established Absolutely talent, Morwenna Banks, is due to be doing a low-budget movie which echoes the dogme style of Scandinavian film-making, while yet another member of the Absolutely repertory com-pany, god of comedy John Sparkes, is the star of Barry Welsh, an Absolutely TV show which tragically . . . nay, criminally, can only be seen in Sparkes's native Wales.

In addition, there's a Sky 1 sci-fi series from Red Dwarf writer Rob Grant, which will star Docherty, J; Sparkes, J; Banks, M, and Mark Williams from The Fast Show. Absolutely also have high hopes for Bad Medicine, a film script by Scottish playwright David Kane set in Glasgow.

Will Jack Docherty ever again assume the besmirched mantle of the telly chat-show host?

''I've retired for good. I did my two-year tour of duty . . . in Vietnam war terms that's the equivalent of 10 years.

''What was most depressing about it was that nothing I did got me sacked! C5 wouldn't let me go! I am serving my period of rehabilitation into society, while my unfortunate brothers - the Nortons, the Skinners - are still lost behind enemy lines, knee-deep in celebs without hope of rescue.''

Welcome back, Jack! Hail, Moray!

n The Creatives begins its

six-week run on BBC2 on Wednesday at 9.30pm.